Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Jolijou Shelly Sew-Along: I Know We Just Started, But Now We're Through

This top is truly a quick sew. After you've got your side seams sewn up, there's only the neck, arm and hem bands to add.
I have to stop right here and admit that after I realized that I was working with three different knits with three different amounts of stretch and I am going to have variability in the length of strip I need, just like the pattern says.
And ladies, when I get derailed off of the pattern, I usually get totally derailed. I didn't even look at the widths for the arm bands or neck band or hem band. I just experimented with what I thought would look good and what would give me some variety.

Back to my very first muslin. I didn't have very many options when it came to fixing it. No extra seam allowance on the sides to let it out and, from my other experiments, I thought that unpicking the neckband and letting loose some of the gathers wouldn't really help a whole lot either.
I decided on a random idea that popped into my head based on a vintage dress pattern I'd seen. I cut triangle shaped inserts, opened up the side seam starting at the end of the sleeve and sewed in some extra room for myself.

Then I chose skinny bands for the ends of the sleeves and a thicker band for the waist, more similar to the pattern, but my shirt is significantly shorter.

Here's the finished product.

This is a good length for me...in the front. The yoga band makes the fabric pool atop my derrière in the back. Which is not my favorite.

I discovered that if I stand with my hands on my hips everywhere I go, I can pretend that my armpit inserts fixed the pulling problem.

But, just between us, those wrinkles are still there.

I haven't completed the grey sweater knit version (my second muslin), but I did complete my third muslin. I tried thicker, contrasting armbands, a longer shirt length and no hem band.

I think I'll get quite a bit of wear from this one. It's very comfortable since I gave it more room in the armscye. I love the fabric (glad I saved it for third!) and I like the contrasting bands.

Just goes to show that sometimes you have to find the exact right combination of things for your body and many times, a pattern can be altered a bit to work for you. You just have to train yourself to have a critical eye.

The wrinkles are still there in this version (see how the sleeve looks twisty too?) because, as we already discussed, I would need to redraft the armcsye and sleeve to have the correct shape in the front AND the back.

I realized after my last post about my pattern/fabric stash, that I do want to make another t-shirt in the near future and I really love the neckline of Shelly and the shaping through the waist.

See? I like how it fits my curves.

So it's still worth frankenpatterning. I don't feel confident redrafting the sleeves for myself, but I could just steal an armcsye and sleeve from another pattern that works for me, trace it and then trace Shelly onto that.